Recently on the website of Tinkoff Bank an article by Ksenia Ivanova was published, which is mainly dedicated to Kazan and a little bit to Tatarstan as a whole. It should be noted that the article is generally written from a favorable perspective, not political, but ordinary, and is a kind of advertisement for the «third capital of Russia» as a suitable place to live. If it had been written in such a spirit as a whole or published somewhere on a social network as the author’s personal opinion, it probably wouldn’t be worth paying attention to. However, the article contains the author’s assessments of serious political issues, namely inter-ethnic relations. And since it is published on the platform of a serious bank owned by a very public businessman, it inevitably looks like a political statement.
Here’s what the article says: «In 2017, Tatarstan took first place in the rating of business openness. But trusted businessmen say that things are not as rosy as they seem. According to them, people with non-Tatar surnames find it difficult to hold high government positions or achieve great success in business, because Tatars prefer to work with each other. For example, in the composition of the Cabinet of Ministers of the Republic, the majority of officials are Tatars. I myself did not encounter any discrimination, but to be fair, I did not aspire to high positions». The question arises — if the author refers to the composition of the government of Tatarstan, leading to a page that begins as follows, why does she not indicate, for those who are too lazy to visit it (and there will be many), that this government is headed by a Russian by nationality, Alexei Valeryevich Pesoshin? Perhaps because it would immediately refute the thesis of discrimination against Russians in the government of Tatarstan? Why doesn’t she mention that in the leadership of the security structures, which have a decisive importance in Putin’s Russia, Russians by nationality occupy leading positions at the republican level? Head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs — Artem Khokhorin, Head of the Investigative Committee — Pavel Nikolaev, Military Commissar — Sergei Pogodin?
In addition, the author reproduces the standard stereotypes of the supporters of the «Russian world» regarding the language problem in Tatarstan: «When I was at school, we had two Tatar lessons a week. Over the years, the local Ministry of Education began to pay more attention to the study of Tatar. In the end, there were more Tatar lessons in schools than other foreign languages and even Russian with literature. In the 2017-2018 school year, there were 1052 teachers of Tatar language and literature in Kazan, while there were 753 teachers of Russian language and literature. Many Russian parents didn’t like the fact that there were more Tatar classes. They filed complaints with the prosecutor’s office to check the legality of the school program. After that, the president even had to speak out about the Tatar language. He said that it was unacceptable to force people to learn the language and to lower the level of Russian education. As a result, the study of Tatar became voluntary. I and my relatives communicate in Russian. Typically, Tatars in Kazan speak both languages well. My colleagues communicate with me in Russian and with each other in Tatar. In my opinion, they don’t even notice that they speak different languages. When I worked in a hospital department with many Tatar-speaking patients, I started to speak Tatar on a conversational level within a month. Now I don’t need to speak Tatar and I have forgotten everything.
As it can be seen from her words, the Russians living in Tatarstan are so overwhelmed with learning the Tatar language that they forget it as soon as the Tatar-speaking patients/clients disappear. By the way, why do they disappear? According to your own words, it can be assumed that it is because «Tatars in Kazan speak both languages well», while there is no mention of Russians. It is understandable, because «in the end the study of Tatar language became voluntary,» so now one can move to Kazan, as the author of this article did in 2002 and encourages others to do in her article, without fearing that not knowing or not wanting to learn Tatar will be some kind of obstacle. Overall, these passages, compared to the rest of the article’s content, give the impression that Kazan is a good city, except for the abundance of Tatars in the leadership of Tatarstan and the language problems, but since the latter have already been resolved, one can expect that as more people like the author of this article move there, it will eventually become an ordinary Russian city.
Now let’s not talk about the author, but about the bank on whose website an article with passages about some discrimination on the basis of nationality in Tatarstan is published. And this is despite the fact that a few years ago this bank was at the center of a scandal when materials were leaked showing that its personnel department had instructions not to hire people of certain nationalities, races and religions. So, according to these materials, a practicing Muslim from Tatarstan has no chance of being hired by Tinkoff Bank (strictly speaking, he or she shouldn’t work there because of the illegality of usury, but that’s another story). But on the website of this bank there is an article claiming that Russians are discriminated against in the government of Tatarstan, even though this government is headed by a Russian.